Paul Goble
Staunton, October 1 – While not as dramatic as Ukraine’s achievement of autocephaly or as directly worrisome as statements by Orthodox hierarchs in Belarus in support of protests against Lukashenka, the action of the head of the Baku archbishop of the Moscow Patriarchal Church serves notice that Moscow’s aspirations to remain a super-national church are doomed.
Yesterday, Archbishop Aleksandr of Baku, the head of the small ROC MP church in that overwhelmingly Muslim country, joined the leaders of Azerbaijan’s Muslims, the mountain Jews there, and the Albanian-Udin communities in celebrating the military achievements of the Azerbaijani army against Armenia (credo.press/233252/).
“We all are witnesses of your unprecedented efforts in defense of the sovereign rights of independent Azerbaijan” in the diplomatic world, but “the patience of the peace-loving people of Azerbaijan has its limits, and Azerbaijan has been forced to adequately respond to the aggressor,” they said in a joint message to President Ilham Aliyev.
“Instead of liquidating the occupation,” the four religious leaders continued, “the Armenian side which has constantly staged provocations on the borders of Azerbaijan,” undermining the possibility of peaceful negotiations, “has forced the Azerbaijani state to defend its rights on the field of battle.”
The power of nationalism is too great in Azerbaijan for the head of the ROC MP community there to do otherwise, and that is why the Moscow Patriarchate’s efforts to remain a super-national church are ultimately doomed even if for the time being, it is able to block more moves to autocephaly.
At the same time, as Credo.ru noted in reporting this, “up to now, not a single representative of the ROC MP has spoken in support of the Armenian people” who are locked in battle with Azerbaijani forces. Thus, what Archbishop Aleksandr did not violate what Moscow wanted now, but it does set the stage of an ROC MP there that is less Russian than it was.
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